Crayon Pack and Flash Gordon

March 5, 2010 7:30 PM

John Coker's Rocketry is organized to provide useful and interesting information for rocketry hobbyists, and cool pictures and fun descriptions for the web surfer curious about hobby rocketry. From an introduction and tutorials, to John's rocket fleet and launch photos, liftoff is made easy. But what brought me here was the Crayon Pack. [via metachat]

Be sure to check out the Forward Igniter, Flash Gordon, and the Nike-Tomahawk.

posted by netbros (10 comments total)

This is a far cry from an Estes rocket engine with a marble for a nose cone (yes, I know, that was stupid, but I was ten), a few balsa fins glued to its proximal end and a section of straw glued to its side for launch.
posted by caddis at 7:37 PM on March 5, 2010

Brings back memories. Like the time my father got the great idea that a coat of polyurethane would reduce the drag on the rocket. Not sure if it had the intended effect, the unexpected consequence was that the nose cone didn't pop and the thing landed nose first 2 feet away from where we standing with the first 4 inches stuck into the ground. Thus ended that experiment.
posted by empty vessel at 8:00 PM on March 5, 2010

Not all my rockets were that simple. I made a beautiful Mercury Redstone model that somehow got crushed in a trunk after I left home for college. Many were utilitarian, and a few like the Redstone were labors of love. Not one of the many rockets I built as a kid survived that trunk in flyable or presentable condition. grrrr.
posted by caddis at 8:22 PM on March 5, 2010

On first scan I read the first link as "Joker's Cock Rocketry".
posted by DecemberBoy at 8:26 PM on March 5, 2010

On first scan I read the first link as "Joe Cocker's Rocketry", which doesn't lend itself to achieving a stable trajectory.
posted by davejay at 9:13 PM on March 5, 2010 [2 favorites]

At some point in middle school some class I was in did a model rocket segment. My friend and I both used Estes kits but everyone else in the class had some cut-rate off-brand things that the school provided. Aside from the Estes rockets every single other one in the class exploded or burned in some fashion upon launch. It was pretty awesome for middle schoolers.
posted by ghharr at 6:57 AM on March 6, 2010

N1 Soviet Moon rocket: 22½ feet tall, three stages and 42 motors!

Wow. There is lots of cool stuff here. I saw the crayon thing the other day but failed to poke around. He has some very nice rockets that go far, far beyond Estes level stuff. Rocketry of this type was in trouble after 9/11 but fears have calmed. Some new rules were recently passed.

This is probably also the place to link the the mother of all amateur rockets which just made the news the other day.
posted by caddis at 8:14 AM on March 6, 2010

Thanks for this link.

Those crayons are elegant, but unorthodox to say the least: oblique faces on the nosecones, and no fins. I might have thought they wouldn't fly as much as traipse around - and dangerously at that.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 8:51 AM on March 6, 2010

(John is well liked in the rocketry community. I've seen his crayon pack fly.)

My favorite personal rocketry site is Vern's.
posted by neuron at 10:20 PM on March 6, 2010

nte: From the photos, the crayons do have fins.
posted by hattifattener at 1:30 PM on March 7, 2010